thoughts from a little urban homestead

a week of spring: lilac

Saturday
I came home feeling under the weather yesterday, so I wasn’t able to post. I’m sorry for missing a day of my “week of spring!”

This last picture of the week is of a little lilac bush that is less than one foot high, but full of new growth.

My vegetable plants are important because I spend so much time growing them from seed and I enjoy the harvest so much.

My perennial flowers are enjoyable because they brighten up my home and it feels like finding secret treasure when they bloom.

But I do have an emotional attachment to some of my plants, this lilac included. It made a long journey to Boston from Windsor, New York. When my parents decided to sell the home I grew up in, I took a few bits of memorabilia:
-a forsythia bush I gave my father one year for his birthday
-an indigo I gave him for father’s day that I had purchased from The New England Wildflower Association
-a lupine, because my mother and I admire Miss Rumphius, the lupine lady
-a yellow rose that my mother thinks is beautiful (and she converted me into a rose fan)
-a bleeding heart from my great grandmother’s garden that later spent many years at our home in New York
-some of the gooseneck loosestrife that I loved to put into arrangements
-a stunning purple clematis
-and this tiny little lilac tree

The one thing that I don’t see sprouting is the bleeding heart, which is breaking my heart because it was my father’s most dear plant. I keep looking for signs of life everyday. Everything else is coming up with vigor.

When I left NY in 2003, I practically burnt rubber driving away because I felt so stifled there and I needed a fresh start. When my parents made the decision to leave last year, I didn’t feel an ounce of sadness that I’d be losing the home of my past.

How surprised am I when I now catch myself missing this place that my dad built with his bare hands to create a home for his family. Or when I find myself thinking about the smell of the clay-laden dirt that we used to curse so much. The other day, I heard peepers (what we country folk call the chorus frog) so loud and clear from the highway and it made my heart ache because I always fell asleep in summers listening to the peepers on our pond. When I see the sky here at night, I remember sitting on the porch staring at the clear, starry sky that was so much brighter there without the Boston light pollution. In spite of my desire to leave and some of the bad memories I left behind, I feel nostalgic about that place. I remember camp fires out back and picking flower bouquets for my mom and the times she’d ask me to “grab something for dinner from the garden.”

How ironic that this lilac from my parents’ home in New York is the state flower of their new home in New Hampshire.

Hello! I’m Cara and this blog serves as my outlet to share garden adventures, veggie recipes, and general things in life that I’m passionate about like family and nature. My career is in publishing, but I have a camera with me always and dream of someday calling a veggie farm my own. Thanks for stopping by.